Our Home in Hudson

Burton D. Morgan did not sit on the board of The Burton D. Morgan Foundation, but he always made his wishes known. On one in particular, he became increasingly vocal in the latter years of his life: Burt Morgan wanted the Foundation he had started to be located in Hudson near the green.

“This is Burt’s community. He wanted to be part of it and contribute to it,” Trustee Richard Chenoweth says.

In 1999, then Foundation President John V. Frank negotiated to buy the Baldwin House on the northeast corner of the green. Built in 1832, the frame house was the birthplace of Caroline Baldwin Babcock, who started the Hudson Library and Historical Society. Library trustees had purchased the building in 1925 for use as the community’s library.

Ultimately, the two-story frame dwelling was not large enough for the growing Hudson community. In 1954 and again in 1963, brick additions were built to the east on Aurora Street.

The Baldwin House was on the market because the Hudson Library and Historical Society had outgrown its additions and was planning to move to a new development called First & Main. The Baldwin House seemed an appropriate place to relocate – even though it meant waiting until 2002 to move when the new library was built.

The library took longer than expected. When the Foundation’s worth grew after Morgan’s death in 2003, the larger and newer brick section of the library seemed more appropriate. A Foundation that would be giving away at least $6 million a year would need a bigger staff and more room. Lengthy and difficult negotiations followed, but eventually the Foundation was able to purchase both the brick building and the adjoining Baldwin House.

The two buildings were separated. The brick building was gutted and rebuilt, and The Burton D. Morgan Foundation moved to Hudson in September 2006.